She was such a nice girl, before all that knitting

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Category Archives: Smoking Hot Socks

Where have I been? The answer is really good – everywhere. I’ve had my nose to the grindstone, knitting away this summer, and I got to do some of my knitting on a 10-state 12-day road trip from Ohio to Montana and back again. What else are you supposed to do when one of your knitbuds says “I’m moving to Montana?” You go with them, and you take your knitting with you, of course. The socks you see here managed to make it from cast-on to cast-off without being blogged; they’re a toe-up pair of Timberline Toes from Lucy Neatby (a sock so nice, I’ve knit it twice), in Regia that was a lovely gift from Lisa and the dogs, unused for far too long. With two pairs complete, I’m now fairly certain that I’ve gotten toe-up socks out of my system, at least for the moment. I wove in the (many) ends of my Smoking Hot Socks, and so they are also officially done. I loved this pattern from beginning to end. They were fun, engaging and quick – completed in a month (if you don’t count the ends). I’m ready to knit another pair.

But right now, my attention is focused on unfinished objects rather than new projects – after a long hiatus I’ve picked up my entrelac socks again. The sorry tale boil down to this – after doing half of the heel prep on sock #1 Easter weekend, 2007, I lost track of what I was doing, and had a devil of a time trying to figure it out. No matter what I did, the second triangle I was making to form the base of the heel didn’t look like the first. I e-mailed Janice (maker of three pairs of Step Above Socks), she was helpful, I was still sort of stuck. Then I came up withe the brilliant idea of faking myself out: why not start the second sock, work up to the heel and just keep going as though nothing were wrong – maybe that would jog my brain into remembering how everything was supposed to fit together? It worked(!).

I was not really planning on participating in the Ravelympics, but I’ve made so much progress on these socks I might not be able to help finishing them this month. Unless I run out of yarn. Now that I’m close to the toe on sock #2, I can see that I might not have enough yarn for the heels and toes. This is the second pair of Koigu socks in a row where I’ve run short – I think I have to start buying three skeins for a pair – or buy stock in Tums for the stress running short causes me. More travel knitting here, with photos to come as I upload them inbetween bouts of knitting. There’s been more, of course – I couldn’t go an entire summer without posting unless I got into multiple kinds of trouble…including spinning. Yes, you read that right. Stay tuned for more details – I promise it won’t be another three months before you hear from me again.

I’m not a quitter, but those sideways socks annoyed me. I wanted to finish them, yet I knew it would only end in heartbreak. So I did what I usually do when faced with knitting disappointment: rip, then distract myself with new techniques. First there was the Magic Cast On, which is pretty impressive, then there was the cable cast on, which is nice enough, then there were the mitered squares – absolutely scintillating in self-patterning yarn. And before I knew it, I had a whole freaking sock finished. Seriously, two weeks is some kind of record for me – these went so fast, May was almost NaKniSockMo – I am thisclose to a complete pair (and who knows what could happen in the next 10 hours?).

As proof, here are Sock #1 and Sock #2 together – there’s no sleight-of-hand or Photoshop trickery going on. These are Monika Steinbauer’s genius Smoking Hot Socks (e-mail her for the pattern, or it’s also available as a Ravelry download) in Trekking XXL 140. I found the garter stitch strip to be sort of understated, colorwise; this incarnation of the Trekking is kind of obnoxiously loud, and I love it. I also have to say that this is an ideal sock pattern for the adventurous or easily bored knitter, because each section of the sock knits up differently – just when you’re tired of the toe, it’s time to slip stitch, then you turn the heel, then you work a pile of mitered squares, then you’re done! Monika recommends a Jojo short row heel, but I went with my favorite tried and true Sherman heel – other than that, I’m knitting the pattern as written.

All I want to do now is knit lots of toe up socks, which seems in direct conflict with my other goal of finishing 14 things this year. Sad but true, waiting for ten more pairs of socks from a slow knitter like me might put us into May 2009, so I’ll need to balance my new obsession with my, er, production schedule. I think I’m going to be one of those knitters with a project scheduled for every day of the week. Then again, I might become one of those knitters who goes out and buys more sock needles.